A Northern Birthday Party

This weekend Jonny and I, along with sista and her boyfriend, went on a road trip to the great Northern Peninsula for my pop's 80th birthday.  Of course, it was freezing all the way up there (not as if it's any warmer in the Bay of Islands) but we had lots of company, lots of wine and a mountain of food.  Jonny even got to go ice fishing, and we saw some lovely Caribou friends on our way home on Sunday.

With all the stress of everyday life- including London's broken tail and me getting accepted to Law school (stressful because now I need to seriously decide to go), it was great to relax and have fun for a whole weekend.

Here are some pictures:

Adrianna and our load of stuff in the back seat.

My favourite little girl was there to join in the fun

Pop with three generations of Keough ladies

The icing on this cake was seriously as thick as the cake itself.  To die for!!!

Heading out for a walk in the wilderness

Caribou herd!

Hope your weekend was as fun as mine!!

Tara

Wreaths and other beautiful things

I recently found a sale at a local craft store on straw wreaths… and so I bought some yarn and felt and went crazy.



I meant to take some better pictures, but I'll probably never get around to it.
To make a basic yarn wreath all you need is a straw wreath (leave on the plastic wrap) a hot glue gun and yarn.  Just hot glue the end of the yarn onto the wreath and start wrapping!! You will need patience, and it may make you dizzy (or maybe that's just me).  Then glue on the other end and voila! your straw wreath is now a yarn wreath.
For the striped felt wreath I used pinking shears to cut the felt in 8" X 1" strips and then pinned them on the wreath using sewing pins.  Make sure they over lap a little.
Then you are free to decorate however you please- felt flowers, buttons, ribbons, or whatever!!
I also made some art recently- using acrylic paint, scrapbooking paper, branches, mod pog and a cricut.
Here is what I came up with:

My bird still needs some legs, but other than that I am very pleased with it.
I have started another canvas art project today- which I will share upon completion!!
Hope you enjoyed
Tara!

Appreciating the Ups in a World of Ups and Downs

A few days ago a young girl who attended my school suddenly passed away.  I was called in for teacher relief, and as the school community processed the news, blank eyes and silence filled the hallways.  Disbelief and confusion filled everyone's hearts.  There was no reason for this.  The temporariness of life was made clear to us all.  In my very short teaching career I have now dealt with a student death twice, something most teachers will never have to do once.

In lieu of this, I decided that I should be more appreciative of the things I have in my life, instead of continually thinking of ways to improve upon my current situation.  Even in this past week alone my life has been filled with so many great things, things to be so thankful for.  Things that aren't really things at all.

Let's take a look:

1.  My grandfather turning 70:

We celebrated Pop's birthday on Friday… which consisted of lots of food and a couple games of cards (one of which I won!).  Growing up with my grandparents next door, and now getting to spend lots of quality time with them, is something that I have always been appreciative of.

2.  That my family are friends and my friends are family:

Jonathan and I went out on the town Saturday night (something we rarely do).  We were joined by my cousin Natalia and my sister… who are two of my best friends; and my best friend Andrew, who I love like a brother.  And of course, Jonny is one of my best friends too!!  For me, I have so many awesome, loving people in my life that the lines between friends and family do not exist.  I have so many people to love that I don't know how there is room in my heart for everyone!

Here are some pictures from the night:

3. Thoughtful gifts from far away.

Andrew just came home from Whitehorse, where my dear friends Antoine and Patti live.  They sent home Christmas gifts for Jonny and I, which in itself was awesome!  part of my gift were these fabulous hand made fabric flowers.  Patti always picks out the most incredible, thoughtful gifts for me- which means more than the item itself.  They are getting married in July and I have a high level of gift-awesomness to live up to!

4.  Living close enough to see my Goddaughter grow up.

Marya and her mom visited this weekend, and we always have lots of fun watching treehouse, telling London to "be good" and getting night time kisses.

5.  Getting to work with my mom.

Some people don't even have a mom, or do not live close enough to visit all the time.  I get to see mine every morning I go to work.  If I'm having a stressful day I can mosey on down the corridor to get some support, if I have a headache I can steal an Advil from her drawer, if I don't have my keys she can unlock my door.  I just finished a music replacement, and the music room was right across the hall from her classroom.  Talk about convenient!  If I ever needed anything I could barge right on in a take it!  We can make dinner plans in the blink of an eye! She can drive me home on snowy days!  My mom gets to take care of me even though I'm old and grown!

I could go on forever about the great things I get to experience on a regular basis… but these are just some of the best things that happened THIS week.  These are the things that, when my life changes again, I'll look back and think how amazing it all was.  I'm just trying to remember how amazing it all is now, in the moment.  Life has no guarantees, so live it, love it, lift it as high as you can!!

Tara

 

 

Wedding: The DIY details

BIRDSEED BAGS

Instead of traditional bubbles, rice or confetti… we decided to get our guests to throw bird seed as we walked back down the aisle.  Our wedding was outside, in a grassy field, so it really fit the space and theme.  Here is how we made them:
-First we cut out 8" X 8" burlap squares.
-Fill the squares with about 3 tbsp of birdseed
-Tie with regular cooking twine (keeps the rustic feel going)
-Add a cute tag.  We used a simple paper punch to create the blue circles and then wrote T + J with a black sharpie.
SIMPLE!!


WOODEN CAKE STAND

I have many people to thank for this one.  Several people found the perfect pieces of wood for me, and then my awesome Father-In-Law put it together.  He used screws to attach the top plate to the stand and then sanded the top.  It cracked a little as it dried, but that just added to the look! (Cake topper is from Etsy)

DIY PROGRAMS

For our programs we try-folded craft colour card stock (got it at staples) and created a neat little ring to give it some flair on the outside.  For the outer ring we used blue card stock 1" wide and taped it with double tape on the back.  I used paper flowers in either red or white as the decoration and a cute white or red button in the centre of the flower.  I used mod pog to glue both the flowers and the buttons.  EASY! (The programs were printed on our personal printer at home)

BIRCH ALTER

Again, my wonderful Father-In-Law built this for the wedding.  I had no hand in the creation so I can't really explain how it was done… only that he held it together with screws.  It turned out oh so rustic and beautiful.
To compliment the alter we had a BIRCH ARCHWAY of pennant flags at the beginning of the aisle:


To keep it simple, we used pinking shears to cut the flags out of different red and blue fabric.  Then my mother (I am so glad everyone else was on board with the DIY projects) sewed them together using red ribbon.  By using the pinking shears, no hemming is needed!  The only sewing is to sew them on the ribbon!
We also used PENNANT flags to decorate the tables at the reception site:


DRIFTWOOD CARDS SIGN

This kind of speaks for itself.  Driftwood = no sanding needed.  I just used acrylic paint and used mod pog for the decoration (the same paper flowers as used for the programs) We had a red mailbox spray painted as our card box but our photographer didn't get a picture…. I'll try to find one!  Thanks to my friend ANDREW for sanding and making it a red mailbox instead of a black one!!
PIN WHEELS

We used these bad boys just about everywhere we could.  My photographer also didn't take a picture of my head table… and I Really need to try to find one!!  I didn't take pictures of the steps I took to make these… but a tutorial can be found here
JAM JAR FAVORS

We have several different kinds of jam at the wedding.  Both of my grandmothers made it for us.  We filled tiny mason jars full and then covered them with a fabric square in our colours.  We used hemp (from wal-mart) to secure the fabric and added a tag that says "Spread the Love".  This project took a looooooong time, as there were so many different things to be accomplished.  But, it was well worth it in the end.

TABLE NAMES

We decided to use places as our table names… and I hand painted every one of them with white acrylic paint from a stencil I printed off from Microsoft Word.  My Mother-In-Law JUST got a cricut… A little too late.  Again, I used paper flowers and buttons as decorations, and put them on silver table name stands.  They really matched the burlap table runners we had on the table and people loved that they were seated at a table that meant something to them as well as us!!
We also DIYed our seating chart

To make this, Jonathan covered a cork board with blue fabric.  We attached the paper flowers using sewing pins and pinned on the paper (each one listed a different table) using thumb tacks that I had hot glued red buttons over.  The letters can be created using a cricut but we did ours by hand (unfortunately).  I placed it on my painting easel and that was that.
I think that's everything I can think of right now on the DIY scene… I know it has been a while since the wedding and I didn't really do a good job documenting my creations, but I still wanted to share, just in case someone out there somewhere needs a little inspiration.
Hope you enjoyed!
Tara

2011 in Review: Atlantic Road Trip Honeymoon

What a week!  I finally recovered from my "food poisoning" only to have to spend the next several days dealing with a sick husband.  Turns out it was stomach flu, not food poisoning at all.  Then my little God daughter came to visit and, unfortunately, it got her too.  Sad times have been had by all.
Good news though… I finally got my LSAT score back and I did awesome!
Ok…. before I share more wedding details I wanted to post about the second most exciting thing to have happened to us in 2011- HONEYMOON ROAD TRIP
What started as a "mini moon" turned into the trip of a life time.  It was an excellent Honeymoon idea- low stress and the freedom to do whatever we wanted, when we wanted.  I recommend it to ANYONE, even if you love travelling to far away, exotic places.  We did SO MUCH and enjoyed ourselves entirely.
Here is the story:
The trip started out as any Newfoundland road trip needs to… with the Marine Atlantic ferry ride to Nova Scotia.  Here I am waiting for the boat to arrive:

Since we took the 7 hour night crossing, the first night of our trip was spent sleeping in chairs.  Here is a peek at our accommodations:

Our first stop after reaching the main land was Halifax, Nova Scotia. There, we lived the life of luxury, staying in a hotel on the water front and enjoying the most amazing meal ever at The Bicycle Thief.  We were there during the annual Busker Festival, which was an added bonus.  In the morning  we headed to Mountain Equipment Co. to gear up for our upcoming camping extravaganza! Before heading further West.  Here is the view from our hotel window and some other Halifax sites:



Next- We left the city behind and took the "long way" to Fundy National Park in New Brunswick. For the next couple of nights we tented in the Point Wolfe campground and spent our days watching the tides, getting muddy and making friends with horses.  The camp food was great and the nights were cold- but hey, we were on our honeymoon and had each other to keep us warm!





After we had had enough of Fundy we packed up our tent and headed South.  We stopped in the scenic town of Saint Andrew's By the Sea for lunch.

The first thing we spied as we explored the town was this guy:

Here's Jonny waiting for food and enjoying the view

The next almost full week was spent in Maine… which, we have discovered, is one of the most awesome places ever.  We should honestly move there, they have shopping AND hunting.  They have a Cabela's AND an H&M and they have an awesome "on the go" beach AND snow in Winter.
The first thing we had to do, being Newfoundlanders and all., was indulge in a traditional Maine Lobster bake.  A lobster with muscles, corn, potato and butter in A ROASTER is pure genius.


We also did Guy Fieri proud and stopped at an old diner for a lobster roll:


Besides lobster, Maine also has many many antique shops- which is a love that Jonathan and I both share. My find-

A 1950s sock monkey (Jonathan bought a hundred year old fishing reel)

The Beach (Old Orchard) was amazing


The shopping was amazing

The Macdonalds was amazing

And we ended it all off in Bangor with our tent neatly tucked under a sweet little apple tree, with our campsite neighbours singing us to sleep

After another hotel night back in Canada (Fredericton) we headed to PEI.  Here we did many PEIish things, like buy potato chips, visit the old fashioned town of Avonlea, eat Cow's ice cream and get our truck full of red dirt.  We made sure we experienced it all and crossed over the bridge one way and took the ferry across when we left.  Here are some pictures:






After PEI is was time to head home, back to our own island on the Ferry. We had two weeks of honeymoon adventure and exploration under our belts.  No two days were the same and no time wasn't well wasted.  It will be hard to ever have a better trip.
I loved going back through all these pictures today, as a pile of snow is falling outside my window as I write this :).
Tara